On my way to the door, I briefly pass by Zoe, who has just ran from her room and looks unusually afraid and short of breath.

“Hmm, is something wrong?” I inquire of her.

She replies, “They’re at… it’s my… the door…” she quits talking to catch her breath. Although this string of words is incomprehensible, I believe I can deduce what she means by them.

“Yes, I heard the knock,” I tell her calmly. “How about you spend some time in Ashley’s room while I meet with the visitors?”

She gives me a brief nod, and then hastily makes her way to the room of my daughter. Without further ado, I go to the front door. Through the glass I can make out several figures standing on our porch. Opening the door reveals a crowd consisting of the following: Mr. Parker and Mrs. Parker, whom I am wholly unsurprised to see; Mr. Harold Parker, the brother of Zoe’s father who also has a daughter about Ashley’s age; Mr. Stephenson who teaches Sunday school; and Mrs. White, who has no particular duty within the church but is a friend of their family.

“Good afternoon,” I tell them in greeting. “I see we have now adopted the tactics of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

“We don’t have time for your jokes,” Mr. Abram Parker greets harshly. “You know why we are here. Just let Zoe walk free, and we can get this over with quickly and quietly.”

“But this is not a jail that she has been sentenced to serve in, is it?” I respond. “And just as well, given that I lack any authority to execute or retract sentences.”

“You know what he means!” Mrs. Parker replies in an agitated manner. “We’re really not in the mood for this.”

“Well, as it just so happens, Zoe does not appear to be in the mood for exiting the premises either,” I counter. “And so, the power to end things quickly and quietly is in your hands alone…”

“How can we trust what you say?” Mr. Stephenson inquires. “Bring her up here with you. Let her tell us herself.”

“She does not seem to be in the mood for that, either,” I explain.

“Well, just go get her anyway!” Mrs. Parker demands. “She’s a child still. She doesn’t know what she wants.”

“I do believe that it is reasonable to assume that, by the age of fourteen years old, a child has the capabilities of having a clear idea of what they want when it comes to such important topics as where to live, as is enshrined into the legal code of most states in the United States of America…”

Mrs. White grabs a chunk of her platinum hair, as if she would like to rip it out. I’d say that this conversation is going quite well thus far.

----------------------------------------

How curious… I was under the impression that we’d only be able to fight the shadow forms of Palace rulers. I suppose this further corroborates my theory that the palace we’re in now represents the cognitions of the church membership at large, and not just one person. It logically follows that we can theoretically meet the shadow forms of any given member of the church under the right circumstances.

And yet, not every person we meet here fits into this category. The other soldiers outside, including Cedric, Anja’s dad, and the version of Yonca that Zoe met, don’t seem to be shadows, but instead are cognitive reflections of a sort. If the owner of this palace is “members of the church at large,” that’s the only reason I can think of to explain why non-members would appear. Cedric’s appearance as a soldier on the “good” side must stem from him having membership in a different church that we’re friendly with or something. The only other explanation would be that this place serves as a palace for the entire town, which seems unlikely given that the church is the only part of it that looks distorted.

This makes me curious about something else; if the desires of these people aren’t being directly represented here, are their actions genuine? It seems to be so, judging by how these cognitive forms have revealed inner thoughts and feelings that you wouldn’t expect from a mere reflection. Given the palace’s depiction of a literal war to represent the real-world culture war, you would expect the non-members to be caricatures of themselves, along the lines of the villains in B-list Christian movies. However, from what I can tell they all act remarkably like their real-world counterparts. This is true of church members, too. They are not cartoonishly evil zealots in this world like I expected, but also reflect the general natures of their real-world counterparts. For example, Collin is technically a “palace ruler” under this theory but still seemed interested in trying to help us. Zoe’s parents’ actions depict them in a rather unflattering light, but they still had enough restraint to not try and attack Anja until she ran her own mouth and pissed them off. How could it be that a palace of distorted desires reflects all the same nuances and intricacies of the real world?

My best guess is that the palace also reflects a shared knowledge of everyone in the town. In a palace only owned by one person, I would expect that person’s distorted desires to paint everyone else as being one-dimensional (although to be fair, there were no other real-world people in Pavia’s palace, so I don’t have data to back this up yet. Moloch clearly doesn’t factor into this.) However, in a palace owned by a group, many different perspectives from each person are introduced into the mix. The confessions we received from Cedric and Yonca may very well be secrets that they have told to someone at the church, and so they are represented as a part of that person’s cognitive version.

Anyways, Zoe’s parents just transformed into strange monsters, so I’ll have to think about this more later.

The odd snake woman who was just Zoe’s mom gets the jump on us by showering our entire party with shards of ice. I’m forced to block them with my arms, and I can feel the biting cold even through my armor. Anja, however, doesn’t seem particularly bothered by them, and hits both foes with a blinding flash of light, which dazes them.

Zoe, who was previously skulking around in the back, runs and takes advantage of the distraction to hit both with a nuclear strike. Zoe’s dad is hit straight on, but Zoe’s mom was seemingly not affected by Anja’s move very much and is able to dodge. The pain of being turned against her own flesh and blood is visible on Zoe’s face.

Ted uses that spell that weakens an enemy’s attacks on Zoe’s mom, and then turns to me. “This 6 on 2 match could get confusing. I reckon we should split our group and isolate each opponent.”

“Not a bad idea,” I agree. “How about the two of us focus on Miss Slithers over there?”

He nods, and the two of us move in closer to Zoe’s mom.

In the interest of keeping the battle as short as possible, I unleash my angelic light attack on Zoe’s mom. I can tell by the furious hissing of the snake on her shoulder that it was effective.

“We got the winged one, then!” Nova affirms before making a huge lunge for Zoe’s dad and socking him with his hammer.

“Sounds like a plan,” I say. “Hey Cedric, how about you come help Ted and I?”

I turn towards him to find that Cedric got frozen in place by the initial assault. Actually, considering that he doesn’t have a Persona, I don’t think he’s going to be that useful to us at this point. Oh well, at least he got us inside.

“…Never mind, it’s just you and me then,” I say to Ted.

“Well, uh, it looks like you guys got everything under control!” Collin calls, shimmying along the wall towards the exit of the room. “I’m just gonna… peace out…”

Derrick confusedly looks back and forth between Zoe’s parents and us, and then wisely decides to follow his brother out the door.

Zoe’s mom isn’t taking my attack lying down. She begins clutching at the air in Ted’s direction, which causes him to tense up like he’s been paralyzed. After a second, his body relaxes, and a sort of ghostly vapor comes out of him that then flies into Zoe’s mom.

“What the hell did she just do to you?” I ask Ted.

“Drained my energy… but fear not, I have enough left for this!”

He jumps into the air and hits Zoe’s mom with one of his signature fire attacks. She seems particularly badly hurt by it. Between that and my preemptive strike, I’m willing to bet that she’s about to meet a quick end.

Before she can fully recover, I run up to her and strike her down with my sword. However, it was not enough to finish her off, and I hear her utter “Get her!” in a harsh whisper. The snake on her shoulder lunges for me, and it wraps around my body like an anaconda. Also, Zoe’s mom wasn’t wearing anything under the snake… Didn’t expect to see this in a palace which is based on a church, but here we are.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“You… are unforgivable!” She hisses, her face contorted with fury. Her voice sounds strange now that she’s in her shadow form; the tones are distorted, like I’m listening to several voices at once. “You turned her against me!”

“Yep. Sure did. I did it right before I told her the Easter Bunny isn’t rea-” an extra-hard squeeze cuts me off mid-sentence as I gasp to catch my breath.

“So you admit to it! You turned her over to your sinful way of life, didn’t you?”

“Actually, she confessed to me first,” I retort. “Trust me, I care about her too much to drag her into a shitshow like this against her will.”

“Unbelievable! You must be lying!” she snarls. “Hurt her,” she says in the hissing voice.

The snake’s mouth bites into the bare flesh on my hand. Very quickly, I feel its toxins enter my veins. It hurts like hell.

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Now that Dad has regained his bearings, he is proving to be quite a difficult opponent. His attacks are quite potent, and he seems to take little damage from direct hits with our weapons. I learned this after a blast from my shotgun barely seemed to leave a dent in his metallic body. Realizing this, we have begun to try and wear him down using magic attacks.

After Anja smacks him with a strong gust of wind, Dad knocks her back with a huge sword and then turns towards me.

“Zoe, stop this insanity and come home to us!” he pleads with me. “Your mother and I, we know what is best for you.”

“Why don’t you think about how she feels for once?” Nova responds. “Are you really sure you’re doing the best thing?”

“Like you would know anything about parenting!” Dad growls back. “You and the foul-mouthed girl are interfering in private family affairs! You have no stake in this discussion!”

“Sure I do.” Anja cuts in. “Zoe is our friend. Unlike you, I care about what happens to her.”

Dad is infuriated by this remark. “You stupid child. How dare you level such accusations against me!”

Dad lifts his hand into the air, and three piercing beams of light envelop us. I surprisingly find that I’m not hurt by them, and neither is Anja. Nova, however, kicks the bucket right then and there, falling face first onto the floor.

“Anja, should we really be angering him further?” I ask, feeling very afraid.

“Sorry… couldn’t help myself,” Anja replies sheepishly. “Anyways, look alive!”

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As if being injected with venom that lights up my nerves wasn’t enough, Zoe’s mom unleashes a fire attack on me while I’m still being constricted. I thought Ted was supposed to be helping me. Where did that little fucker go?

“Zoe was always my good little girl,” Zoe’s mom rants. “She did everything she was told to do. She’d never do something like that! Not unless you turned her heart!“

“Your ‘good little girl’ is fourteen years old. You can’t have expected…” but I have to stop and desperately pant air into my lungs. I can’t take much more of this. I feel like I’m slipping away…

Thankfully, at long last I hear a spray of gunfire from beside me, and the snake that had been squeezing and biting me suddenly lets go.

I turn to see that Cedric has finally thawed out, and now has his gun turned towards Zoe’s mom. He pulls the trigger again… to find that he’s already used up his clip. Zoe’s mom kicks him into the back wall, where he crumbles to the floor and disintegrates.

I take this opportunity to jump to my feet and put the tip of my sword at Zoe’s mom’s neck. Checkmate.

“How dare you treat me this way!” she scolds me. “You ruined our family, do you hear me?”

“Right. Because you did absolutely nothing to cause that,” I snark at her disdainfully. “Just give up already. You lost.”

“You will be punished, you hear me!” she rants continuously, rapidly losing her composure and breaking down. “You horrible, filthy girl! You and your arrogant parents will be nothing but fuel in the furnace! You’ll be thrown from the party and into the night!”

“Yeah, sure. Because God hates people who try and care for the oppressed and downtrodden,” I reply sarcastically, rolling my eyes.

She loses it completely at this point and starts crying on the floor like a child throwing a tantrum. Still, she is shrouded in light once again, and appears as her usual, blonde, thankfully clothed self.

Ted finally re-emerges, scuttling up on all fours and coming to a stop next to me. “It looks like the other half of the fight is still ongoing,” he observes. Indeed, Anja and Zoe are still wailing on Zoe’s dad with their respective magic attacks. Nova is lying face down on the floor, so he was probably knocked out a little while back.

“Where did you run off to, anyway?” I ask him.

“I was defrosting Cedric,” Ted explains. “I thought that he may be of use.”

“Well, he definitely was, so thank you,” I say. “Unfortunately, it seems as if he’s been done in now.”

“Alas, poor Cedric,” Ted laments.

I look back at Zoe’s mom, who is done crying and seems to have finally accepted defeat. I wonder… if Zoe’s mom is one of the owners of the palace, does defeating her shadow mean that I can talk some sense into her now?

“Are you here to rub it in my face more?” she asks me resentfully.

“As much joy as that would bring me, I’ll settle for a review of what we’ve learned from this experience,” I reply. “Unless you’re going to tell me that you still stand by what you did to her?”

She sighs very heavily, but seems mollified all the same. “We panicked, alright? Why, any parent in our position would’ve done the same thing.”

“Um, no. That’s ridiculous,” I rebuke. “My parents didn’t.”

“That’s because your parents are idealistic fools. Only a pair of idiots like that try to seriously make a living being musicians.”

Uh… what? “What the fuck does that have to do with anything?” I question, confused by this turn of rhetoric.

It’s her turn to roll her eyes this time. She takes a deep breath. “You must know how Zoe is by now. She’s so pure-hearted; she wants nothing in the world more than to help those who are in need. And she’s also so, so naïve. The cruel world we live in will eat her alive! Our powerful position in the town gives us many, many connections. We can help her find success in whatever it is she chooses to do. But if everyone believes that we’re promoting sin, that reputation we have will be sunk. How would that be helping her?”

“And you decided that making her homeless would be an improvement?”

“No, you idiot girl!” she bites back, flaring up again. “You just got to lay down the law with children when it comes to nonsense like that. We knew that she was going to come back after she was done having a little pity party. Or rather, she would’ve, if your mother hadn’t scooped her up from us!”

This strikes a nerve with me. “Okay, I get it now. You don’t give a fuck about how she feels. You just care that she’s not your perfect little trophy daughter anymore.”

“What I care about is giving her a good life!” she insists, sounding almost pleading now. “You can’t get a good job as a homosexual! You’ll get the phone slammed on you all your life!”

“How much longer do you think it’s going to stay that way?” I question her. “The world’s changing, you know. By the time Zoe and I are adults, well-qualified and skilled people won’t be turned away based on such shallow factors anymore.”

She doesn’t say anything to that. She bites her lip in a strikingly Zoe-esque way. I turn back towards the other half of the fight, where Zoe’s dad is showering what appear to be blindingly bright comets upon Anja and Zoe. They’re starting to look worn down.

“Well, whatever. Can you get your husband to calm the fuck down?” I ask her. “It seems like we’re not really gonna get anything more out of bashing each other’s heads in.”

“Okay… perhaps that would be best,” she agrees.

----------------------------------------

Ashley and Ted seem to have won their half of the battle, as they have come to join us along with Mom, who is no longer in her shadow form. Ashley looks miserable; it’s as if she could drop dead at any moment.

Dad looks down at Mom with confusion. “What is happening? Have you given up?” he asks.

Anja stops, and also turns towards the others. “Damn, Ashley,” she states simply. She performs some type of healing magic which affects the whole group, and I breathe a sigh of relief as I immediately feel its effects.

“Thank you, Anja,” Ashley says genuinely. Nova is now getting back to his feet, looking confused and disoriented.

“We’re not getting anywhere by fighting right now,” Zoe’s mom states sternly. “I’m afraid we may have somewhat of a misunderstanding on our hands.”

I frown at this. A misunderstanding? After everything that has happened?

“Very well then,” Dad agrees. He exits his shadow form as well.

“Uhh… what’s she talking about?” Nova questions.

Anja and I look at Ashley, who gives a slight shrug. So not even she knows?

“Zoe… honey…” Mom says, wearing a rare look of humility. “I’m sorry that all of this ever happened. You need to know that… you were always welcome to come back at any time. We’ll welcome you home with open arms.”

I blink, surprised. And then I feel something which I honestly don’t expect…

“No,” I say.

My parents freeze, looking slightly stunned.

I take a deep breath. “I lived my whole life for you. I followed all your rules. I worked as hard as I could push myself to. And for you to make me feel worthless after all of that…”

“Dear, we know now that we made a mistake,” Dad interjects. “But what we’re saying is…”

“It wasn’t a mistake!” I interrupt, feeling my frustration flare up. “You were going to send me to some hospital which could have… scarred me for life! You were torturing that man just for believing something different than us! You were going to torture one of my friends! How you acted, when I told you about Ashley and I, that was the real you. That’s how you truly feel about me. And…” I gasp, suddenly having an epiphany. “You’re only backing down now because… you’re afraid of the consequences. Just like I was…”

“Are you telling us that… you don’t want to come home?” Dad asks, looking a little crestfallen.

“No she doesn’t want to come home!” Nova chimes in, seemingly unable to take it any longer. “Are you people stupid? What made you ever think that!”

My emotions become too overwhelming, and I find that I’m not able to speak anymore. My anger from earlier is mixing with grief and shame. I cover my face with my hands.

I feel a hand on my shoulder. “We’re proud of you, Zoe,” Anja’s voice tells me in a low voice. “Need a hug?”

“Okay,” I say. I accept her hug, but I don’t allow myself to start crying.

“That was unlike you, Zoe,” Ashley says, smiling at me from over Anja’s shoulder. “And I mean that in a good way.”

I nod. I suppose that was very unlike me. But I think I know what I have to do now.

I break the hug with Anja and say, “I don’t want to talk with them anymore. We need to finish this.”

“We do indeed,” Ashley agrees. She turns back towards my parents.

“We’re going to confront Palmer now and bring an end to this conflict,” she states. “Feel free to tell us where he is. If you don’t, we’ll find him anyway.”

“You can find him… on the bottom floor,” my mom says. She’s looking down at the floor and looks rather sad, which makes me feel guilty again. “You should… get down there quickly. He’s about to unleash our secret weapon.”

“Um, secret weapon?” Anja asks, looking fearful. “Why is this the first we’ve heard of it?”

“It’s an unstoppable weapon that can obliterate the hearts of the sinful,” my father explains further. “And once it has been activated, he will lead us into battle to…” he pauses, sighing.

“To do what?” Ashley questions.

“To take our country back,” my mom finishes.